Bird Names under the tutelage of David Lineal has been recording and releasing albums since 2004. Online streaming player available courtesy of the Free Music Archive-- stream tracks from our albums, and enjoy free music downloads. If you like it, please support our cause by buying our music on vinyl, cassette, or CD at the Bird Names record store.

Bird Names Releases 2005-2010, with some Context

Bird Names Sings the BrownsUpset! the Rhythm, 2009

In fall 2008, a five-piece Bird Names band set to create a process-oriented recording situation-- to focus on crafting the situation of making a record, from which the album would emerge almost as a pollution of the process.

We bought a rad 1/2" tape machine, established Studio Ghost Balls at Al, Nora, & Colin's house, and recorded Sings the Browns in three weeks. The sound of Chicago fall, of streetlevel living, of mysteries and supralingual things winging about come through. No computers were used for the recording and mixing of this album. Insular we abstracted ourselves away, and made out the Browns, the shitty blues.

Buy it on Vinyl / CD * Press/Criticism

It's bizarre and uproarious, disorienting and just plain out there. But my god, is it fantastic. -- Treble Magazine

A piece of weirdo pop brilliance that sounds pretty much unlike anything else happening right now -- Chicago Reader

Open Relationship
Unsound Records, 2008

Recorded in October 2007 in a small empty house in Berkley, IL on a Fostex R-8. With meditation by Nora, Colin, Albert, David and sage Griffin Rodriguez sharpening our knives, combing our attitude. As too much power and choice will overman, the process growthfully gave us equalization and fidelity within gated space. The album has an AM-radio sheen, ambivalent moods, and mild gnosis. Probably the lightest BNs record.

This record is available in limited-edition handpainted 12" vinyl at our store

Buy it on Vinyl / CD * Press/Criticism

20 Charters (10" EP)
Pecan Crazy Records, 2008

The frosted flip side of OPEN RELATIONSHIP's mirror. Written concurrently with that album, 20 CHARTERS collects the drunkest gems of the recording era. Huge, gnarly, kissed with dance, wild as hell. Available exclusively as a 10" record, with screen printed cover.

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Undomesticated, raucous, urgent, and alien like the 20s and 30s stuff on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music -- Chicago Reader

Wooden Lake Sexual Diner
Unsound Records, 2007

Summer/fall 2006 4-tracks songs keep us walking down the trail set off along by On Opaque Things, and the forest turns weirder, uncertain, heavy with portent. More musical, more straddling the fidelity threshhold of the Fostex XR-3, more consistent in projection of tone. Wooden Lake throws a net of being lost, of a child's negativity.

Buy it on CD * Press / Criticism

On Opaque Things
Pecan Crazy Records, 2006

On a busy block above Milwaukee Ave in Chicago for three weeks in late-April to mid-May 2006 David wrote and recorded over 50 songs. The 17 selections of On Opaque Things make a picture of this time and place. The fast brushwork conjured authentic unconsciousness, the harmony of imperfection. Playful, bizarre, crude, filled with joy and spirit.

EP of a studio session from May 2006. The most extensive document of the acoustic period of Bird Names (spring/fall 2006). Naomi Caffee, ur-Julie Andrews chanteuse, and peculiar energy infuse the session. Popsheepsaid of SQUIDLESS TRACELAND "Whatever this CD-R is . . . it's incredibly great. You should listen to it and start your own band in your own image. You should pledge never to give a birthday gift other than a disposable camera. You should record one song a day for a year, choose the best three and put out a 7." Handpainted editions of this album are available by special request to Bird Names.

7" Split w/ Killer Whales
Do the Math, 2006

33rpm 7" split features Bird Names tunes "We Want to Be Old," "Excerpted Sky," and "I'm Looking at a Robin." The Killer Whales, our leggiest band girlfriend in Chicago, make pure yellow sunbeams on their side of the split. (Do the Math Records)

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Regretting the Sun
Heavy Medley, 2005

Limited release CD-R compilation of 4-track recordings from 2004-2005. Featuring lost gelt like "Lifetimes Reading the News" and "I Dislike my Girlfriend." Handpainted editions of this album are available by special request to Bird Names.

Fantic Yard
Heavy Medley, 2005

A tasteless sampler of recordings from 2004-5, featuring Albert, Colin, David, Andrew, Eric, & Naomi. All too effectively exhausting by design. The 17 songs were culled from the EP "Croatoan" (recorded in a squat Skokie office), 4-track bong sessions, a live show, and beyond, marking a daunting heterogeniety. I've been thinking of cleaning it up, but until then: completists only, and woe betide them.

Said the Chicago Reader "I wouldn't have been surprised to learn that it was recorded in a men's room stall at the United Center . . . [O]ne of the brightest products of Chicago's art-damage scene in some time"